5.  The applicant was born in 1973 and lives in Baku.
6.  The applicant was a co-founder and director of a public association named “The Journalist Inquiry Centre” (“Jurnalist Araşdırmaları Mərkəzi” İctimai Birliyi), established on 15 July 2001. This was a non-profit organisation aimed at promoting the profession of a journalist and freedom of mass media in Azerbaijan.
7.  On 12 September 2001 the association's founders filed a request for its state registration with the Ministry of Justice (hereinafter also referred to as the “Ministry”), the government authority responsible for the state registration of legal entities. In accordance with the domestic law, a non-governmental organisation acquired the status of a legal entity only upon its state registration by the Ministry.
8.  According to the Government, by a letter of 11 October 2001 the Head of the Department for State Registration of Legal Entities of the Ministry of Justice replied to the applicant that the association's charter contained a number of deficiencies and requested the founders to revise the charter accordingly (the Government submitted a copy of this letter). According to the applicant, the founders did not receive such a letter and, in fact, did not receive any formal reply from the Ministry for more than one year and four months.
9.  In the meantime, the founders made certain amendments to the association's charter. On 12 September 2002 they re-submitted their registration request together with the new version of the association's charter. In the cover letter for this request, the applicant noted that the founders had made an original request one year earlier but, despite two follow-up letters of 25 September and 2 November 2001 and a meeting with the Ministry official, they had not received any formal reply from the Ministry.
10.  In January 2003 the applicant filed a lawsuit against the Ministry with the Yasamal District Court, complaining of the Ministry's failure to take any action within the ten-day time-limit specified by law.
11.  While the examination of the lawsuit was pending, on 27 January 2003 the Ministry returned the registration documents to the applicant “without taking any action”, i.e. without issuing a state registration certificate or an official refusal to register the association. In the cover letter, the Ministry noted that the association's charter did not comply with Articles 3.1 and 10.3 of the Law on Non-Governmental Organisations. Specifically, the charter did not provide for the internal procedure to challenge a decision to terminate membership in the association. Moreover, the official name of the association allegedly did not mention its organisational legal form. It appears that the Ministry's letter of 27 January 2003 referred to the deficiencies in the association's original charter, although these deficiencies had already been rectified in the revised version of the charter submitted to the Ministry on 12 September 2002.
12.  On 10 February 2003 the Yasamal District Court dismissed the applicant's claim, finding nothing unlawful in the actions of the Ministry. The court found that the association's charter had not been drafted in accordance with the requirements of the Law on Non-Governmental Organisations and, therefore, the Ministry's refusal to register the association had been lawful.
13.  The applicant appealed. On 24 June 2003 the Court of Appeal upheld the first instance court's judgment. On 16 October 2003 the Supreme Court upheld the Court of Appeal's decision.